Advances in Heart Disease?

Please note that this section contains my personal notes from my readings on this topic.

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Some great advances have been made, to be sure, which may account for the fact that our death rate from heart disease is a full 58% lower than what it was in 1950. A 58% reduction in the death rate seems a great victory for chemicals and technology. One of the greatest strides has come from better emergency room treatment of heart attack victims.

In 1970, if you were older than 65 years, had a heart attack and were lucky enough to make it to the hospital alive, you had a 38% chance of dying. Today, if you make it to the hospital alive, you only have a 15% chance of dying. The hospital’s emergency response is much better, and consequently huge numbers of lives are being spared.

… Between hospital advances, mechanical devices, drug discoveries, lower smoking rates and more surgical options, there clearly seems to be much to cheer about. We’ve made progress, so it seems.

The incidence rate (not death rate) for heart disease is about the same as it was in the early 1970s. In other words, while we don’t die as much from heart disease, we still get it as often as we used to. It seems that we simply have gotten slightly better at postponing death from heart disease, but we have done nothing to stop the rate at which our hearts become diseased.